1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cooking machine having bread making function and a steaming function.
2. Description of Related Art
Various cooking machines such as automatic bread making machines and rice cake making machines have been proposed for automatic production of bread and rice cake.
For example, an automatic bread making machine such as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 5-115383 (1993) is designed so that, when a user presses a start switch after putting bread ingredients (wheat flour, water, yeast and the like) in a vessel called "hopper", a kneading process for kneading the bread ingredients, a shaping/fermenting process for allowing the resulting dough to expend to a predetermined level in the vessel and a baking process for baking the expended dough are automatically performed in sequence.
An automatic rice cake making machine such as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 8-23904 (1996) is designed so that, when a user presses a start switch after glutinous rice rinsed and soaked with a predetermined amount of water has been put in a vessel, a steaming process for steaming the rice and a kneading process for kneading the steamed rice are automatically performed in sequence.
Where a home user has these two types of cooking machines, a large storage space is required. In addition, handling of the cooking machines is very troublesome, because the user has to take a desired one of the cooking machines out of the storage space to use it for cooking.